


A Soft Epilogue

by skywalker trash (miarrow)



Category: Spinning Silver - Naomi Novik
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-08-09 08:52:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16446689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miarrow/pseuds/skywalker%20trash
Summary: She didn’t know what to make of this Mirnatius. It confused her as much as discovering he had never bargained with a demon did. As much as the sketches of a calmer man had not matched him. She did not like not knowing. Not knowing was dangerous and she had claimed him for better or worse.





	A Soft Epilogue

The ride back to Koron was quiet. Irina previously would have appreciated the silence, not wanting to deal with Mirnatius nor the demon sharing space with him, now she was unsure. After banishing Chernobog, Mirnatius had stared at her in a way that made her feel as if the heat from that now smothered flame was still with him and then as suddenly it had stopped. He had not returned to his imperious state, but rather kept a distance from her and provided one worded responses to her father and his court. Magreta had softened to him and he seemed to keep the same distance from her kindness. Irina supposed it would have been strange to suddenly escape his tsarina on the ride home, and so he hadn’t. This was all she could presume, because Mirnatius was saying nothing and she truly hadn’t known him before she claimed him. 

Finally, as the sun was setting and they were settling where to have shelter, Irina broke the silence herself. “There is an inn in the next town, it may be better suited than attempting to push forward onto the next reasonably distanced estate.”

Mirnatius didn’t quite startle, but he looked up from his desolate gaze out the windows of the carriage and then to her, before immediately nodding and telling the guard nearest to him as much.

He settled back into his seat again soon after that saying nothing and Irina had no use for things such as annoyance, but she felt the urge to sigh as if she did. 

The inn was empty enough that they did not have to impose authority as tsar and tsarina to cause the innkeepers to rid their guests. It also meant that after a dinner, a needless warming by the fire now that spring had come, and the habit she had come to of speaking with their hosts and learning their names, that she and Mirnatius did not have attendants forced to sleep in their room. 

It was much harder to keep her annoyance tempered down when it was it was only she and her husband, rather than a retinue of their people, her people. “I thought you would be pleased to be free of that demon.”

This time Mirnatius did not startle, but he turned towards her and the look he gave her was abject confusion. “What are you… of course I am—-I am…” He paced and turned and paced again. “I have no idea what to do.”

Irina resisted looking at the bed. She expected to be married to Prince Casimir and to not have to deal with the vows of a marriage she nor her husband had desired. She resisted the impulse to name it so and walked towards him. “About what?”

The tsar let out a deep scoffed laugh. “Everything. I have never…” he gestured to himself. “I can do anything now and I can’t even think of what that would be.”

“Ruling your kingdom a little more attentively would be a good start,” Irina suggested.

Mirnatius turned to her and that look, that one that had warmed her more than the fire was back on his face and she could not pretend she hadn’t seen it. “I suppose your plan to rid the land of me and have me burnt on a stake has ended.”

“I suppose,” Irina gave him. She didn’t know what to make of this Mirnatius. It confused her as much as discovering he had never bargained with a demon did. As much as the sketches of a calmer man had not matched him. She did not like not knowing. Not knowing was dangerous and she had claimed him for better or worse. 

He smiled at her and stepped one step closer. His arm reached out for her and she remembered his fingers on her thigh and wished she hadn’t as the heat from his gaze felt as if it had transferred to her face. But his hand did not touch her. He did no more than brush the tips of his fingers against the edge of her sleeves and then his hands dropped at his sides, the same time as his head. Mirnatius took a few steeling breaths and she understood him even less now.

“I have nothing,” he said, more softly than she had ever heard him, “to repay what you did.”

The heat Irina felt was replaced with a cold lump that formed into her throat. The imagining had been bad enough to make her pity him when she had wanted to do nothing else, but the knowing, the knowing was worse.

“You have time,” Irina said, much more evenly than she felt. “To find something.”

Mirnatius let out a deep heavy sigh and lifted his head again, his eyes were glassy and still beautiful, and he let out another scoffed laugh. “To rule our kingdom better?”

“A start,” Irina agreed, but she smiled a little as she did. 

Finally, Mirnatius glanced at the bed, frowning as he did. Irina remembered the suggestion he’d made for an heir, the mere repulsion at the idea of bedding his wife when she was this plain was as irritating as it was a relief. At the time. Now she didn’t know what to think. 

“No one is here,” she said, smoothly. “We don’t have to share a bed in that way.”

Mirnatius frowned more and then turned to her again and it seemed as if he couldn’t help the frown shifting into a more speculative expression. “Have to,” he repeated. “Do you want to?”

The silver ring was still on his finger, Irina had noticed he hadn’t taken it off, though it did none of the magic it seemed to do her, perhaps because he did not need it. Even without the demon’s magic, he was still handsome. “I do not want to bed a man who has no interest in me,” she said plainly. 

Mirnatius stared at her again and his eyes seemed to take her in even more than when he’d drawn every aspect of her face trying to make some sense of why anyone thought she could be beautiful. 

“You claimed me as yours,” he said. “You saved me from the monster that has kept me in his grips since my first breath. Irina, interest is an impossible thing to ask, I could meet a thousand people and for now until my last breath it would only be you.”

She was not used to him being charming and that, Irina reasoned, was why she felt herself flush. “I have no interest in being a debt of obligation either.”

Mirnatius frowned again and then at least his face was familiar. “That isn’t what I said.”

“Your gratitude is not desire,” Irina said. “Nor a basis of whatever you were implying.” A marriage, as she wanted but had never truly expected.

“It is to me,” Mirnatius said, sharply. Then he turned his head, as if he regretted snapping. “What is you desire, Irina? That, at least, might start repaying this debt.”

“You aren’t in my debt,” Irina said. “You are my husband. I desire us to be as useful to our people as they are to us. I desire the peace that we have been moving away from since before your father’s death.” 

Mirnatius frowned harder, but nodded before turning back to her. “I will try.” The simpleness of the moment soon passed as he could not help but add, “Since you decided not to trade me in for a more malleable choice.”

Irina gave into her annoyed sigh finally, but instead of rising to his bait, called the servants back in to help them ready for bed. The maid who had seen it all was not there, a purse as big as her form, sent her south to speak of nothing she’d seen. The other servants chittered and when they did not think Irina was looking continued to size up Mirnatius, with the added gesture of unseeing the beauty in her from the silver and returning to confusion. She was happy when they left, however guilty she felt about being so. They were her people. She had claimed all of them and she had meant it.

Irina, in her nightgown, slipped into the bed and then soon after Mirnatius followed. There was less of a horror now and she could not call him a stranger, but there was no comfort there either. The words he’d said rolled in her head and she ignored how angry they made her. Anger was of no use. It never had been.

The room was darkened and the last candle that had been left out, a needless expense, dripping to its last wax. She did not know how Mirnatius knew she was still awake, but he did.

“I have an interest,” he said, plainly. He didn’t turn towards her and kept his focus on the canopy above them. “You claimed me,” he said again and before Irina could reply that she had claimed all of her people, he added, “I am yours.”

In the darkness, it was easier to feel what that might really mean and if she wanted it that way. Irina pursed her lips together and then twisted her fingers in the sheets. “Is that why you kept the ring?”

“Yes,” Mirnatius answered immediately. She could feel his eyes on her again and refused to turn and see the last shadows of them, pouring out with the undue affection that she had never truly known except from Magreta. 

“You have made it very clear you think I am ugly,” Irina said. There was no bite to her tone, only pragmatism. 

“I said unremarkable, not ugly,” Mirnatius said and then cleared his throat. “I have trained myself to only look at the brocade and image for others to take in, not myself.”

“Your drawings say otherwise,” Irina said, there was a little bite to that. She could not help remember how her father had said he’d captured her in them and wondered what he’d meant by that. 

“That was the only thing I had,” Mirnatius said quietly, and then added. “I am sorry.”

Irina rolled over the things he could be sorry for beyond the multiple attempts to find out what anyone saw in her, but before she knew that he had been trying to protect himself from what he did not know. The secrets she was keeping, rather than being abjectly awful. 

“I know what I look like,” Irina said. “Unremarkable is a fair statement.”

“No it isn’t.” Mirnatius reached out again and she felt the faintest touch of his finger in her hair. “You are clever and frustrating and had no reason to free me and you still did. Remarkable is an understatement.”

Irina fought the smile, the compliment, and the way it felt with his fingers in her hair. “Are you sorry for trying to feed me to a demon or for calling me ugly?”

“Yes,” Mirnatius said and when she finally looked to him, even in the faint light of the candle she could tell he was smirking.

She had claimed him and he had given himself beyond that. Lying next to him, Irina could see the future in that, beyond the practicalities of what they had to do as rulers. She reached her own fingers towards him, pressing them into the planes of the high bones of his cheeks. He shifted a little closer and for the first time the kiss was not to torment either of them. Irina let him pull her in by the small of her back and sighed again, this time with no annoyance as he kissed her more deeply. 

As Mirnatius’s fingers on her thigh rose the same feelings again, they were not tempered by the reality, but instead solid as the warmth in her stomach against the cold in her veins, as he once again said, in a whisper. “I am yours.”


End file.
